


There is Some Relief in Letting Go

by amycooper



Category: Twin Peaks
Genre: Childhood Trauma, Other, Trauma, but references a number of relationships, it's gen - Freeform, post Twin Peaks The Return, that don't exist in this timeline, timeline's kind of wibbly wobbly timey wimey, which ends up making relationship tags a bit complicated
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-05
Updated: 2017-09-05
Packaged: 2018-12-24 09:14:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12009654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amycooper/pseuds/amycooper
Summary: When you get off the Merry-Go-Round but your head still spins.PLEASE: Read the notes at the beginning before reading the story.  This was difficult to tag correctly.





	There is Some Relief in Letting Go

**Author's Note:**

> It is hard to tag this as gen or ship or slash because it is very firmly all three as it essentially deals with the fall out of Dale Cooper messing with the timeline. He remembers relationships that have now never happened. Nothing's explicit nor is there any ships in the timeline he's in now.
> 
> Also: this will make very little sense if you haven't watched Fire Walk with Me, Twin Peaks, and Twin Peaks the Return. My Life, My Tapes (which you can find online) isn't strictly necessary, but would probably add to your understanding of the story.
> 
> There are *super* vague references to unspecified child abuse.

_He is letting Her go. He submits to Her story. She-with-a-thousand-names smiles, laughs, cries as Her angel descends. He does nothing but view Her salvation with observant kindness. He thought Himself Her savior, before. He thought Himself the descending angel. Full of foolishness, He saved Her and lost Her, saved Her and lost Her, over and over again, through a thousands lives, the universe warping around His need._

_There is some fear in letting go._

_When She is gone, He falls away. He has no connections, for what is He without Her?_

***

There is a noise. The noise is a voice. A voice against the darkness, word jumbling in his dizzying mind. Voice familiar: an echo of uncountable lives. His eyes open to let in the light. The face above him breaks out in a relieved grin. Friend, lover, colleague, sometimes even foe. A Man with Nearly as many Names as He. Which one will it be this time?

The face is frowning now. So many times He has fallen into His role without a doubt, but He has lost the script. The character names blur together. So He smiles at the man, and tells him He will do better next time around. The worry on the face becomes more pronounced and words are spoken to someone to his left.

He let Her go and Her angel came. There will be no next time. How could he forget?

There is a release in letting go. It makes him laugh. The words around him become sharp with concern so He pats an arm and lets his eyes slip closed. He had pursued Her as long as He could remember. He never knew He could be so tired. So He lets go of everything, for a while.

In the twilight the words wash through him like the sound of wind through the trees. He’s lifted, but He has learned to submit now and let all things happen. He is moved and the eventual prick on the skin of his arm doesn’t rouse him.

When He does open His eyes again, the Man with Nearly as Many Names as He slumbers in a chair. The room has changed: hospital. How many times has He bled?

Another leans over him. Another face with pockets full of names. But when he handles Him, He is grounded by a constant. No matter the name, no matter the age, his touch is always the same: powerful but delicate, tethering spider silk. The room stops spinning.

“I gave Her up to the angel,” He says, as eager to share His accomplishment as a child their first finger painting.

“Coop, what are you talking about?” The Man of the Spider Silk Touch says. Behind him the Man with Nearly as Many Names as He stirs.

“It isn’t so hard, as long as you keep the fear from your mind,” He echoes Himself and takes hold of a hand. They once made love in the bed of a pickup. He once shot him dead in the middle of the night. His dance may have been with Her, but the Man with the Spider Silk Touch was always welcome on the floor.

“He’s making no sense.”

He blinks. He lost track of what was happening. The room blurring in his mind with at least a hundred other hospital rooms. How often has he bled?

Both men are at his side now, faces etched with worry. Don’t they realize the ride was over now? He stepped off. It was just his head spinning. The universe is no longer warping around his whims, just within His mind. He reaches up to touch their worried faces. They once all three shared a large bed in a cabin in the woods where the owls hooted at all hours. Her blood had found its way to Their carpet.

“She’s gone. I let Her go,” He reassures them. “Her blood won’t stain Our carpet again.”

This does not lessen their worry.

“The world does not submit to me any more. I submit to the world,” He says, trying again.

They say frantic things to each other.

What does it matter? So he sleeps.

***

The next time he wakes it is to the YELLING MAN and Woman whose Hair Changes Colors. It is red now, so He calls her Linda but she frowns and shakes her head. Better luck next time.

The YELLING MAN hurls words at Him that bounce around in His brain until he vomits.

Not-Linda pushes the YELLING MAN out of the room and tends to Him like the older sister she sometimes is. This is good, for when they are lovers she holds Him as if she is trying to disremember past violations.

***

There is food the next time so He eats. And coffee, which He drinks. It is damn fine. Those words cause a relieved chuckle among the assembled. So he presses forward and talks about Heather and Loretta and the honeymoon on the lake until everyone looks bewildered and alarmed so He fakes falling asleep until the universe obliges to make his lie a reality. He wakes screaming until the nurse comes with a needle to his IV and he melts back into the pillows, whimpering and trembling. A bandaged woman with soft brown curls strokes his hair, soothing Him. Her face also echos in His mind. He calls her Heather but his eyes slip closed before he can see her alarm.

***

Heather and Loretta introduced themselves to each other under the names Audrey and Annie and commenced in the aloof and polite conversations of complete and utter strangers meeting in a hospital room over an ailing friend. This makes Him laugh for as He remembered it He was the distant third wheel of the three of them. That time was a good one; he was starting to learn about letting go and finding the joy-peace that comes when the narrative wasn't about you. Of course it was all disrupted when She screamed.

They touch him gently, like He was a fragile thing, though He feels like He’s weathered too much for that label. The room has three chairs, one empty, and a machine that chirps and the air of lost things.

Eventually Annie/Loretta gets up to leave. She has scars on her wrists. She says goodbye with a chaste kiss. Somehow He knows she won’t be back. He lets her go.

***

Dale Cooper.

He can remember the name, if he searches back in his collection of names far enough. Dale Cooper. The name loosens others and Dale Cooper goes searching for them. The Man with the Spider Silk Touch tries to wait patiently, but it goes against his nature and so he bristles a little until He, Cooper, produces the name Albert.

Albert smiles. It’s the first time he’s seen this version of the Man of the Spider Silk Touch do so. No, not the Man with the Spider Silk Touch. Call him Albert. He says it again, his fingers playing with the edge of the crisp white hospital sheet.

“Do you know where you are?” Albert asks him in an even, professional voice but with eyes that fail miserably at masking their concern.

“I’m in a hospital, Albert.”

“Yeah, you are, Coop.” Albert says. There’s a carefulness about him that makes Cooper frown. Albert. Albert with cautious hands, yes, but since when has he been careful about what he says?

“You’ve been in and out of it for nearly a week,” Albert says. “Your hormone levels suggest severe exhaustion but everything else checks out okay. You, ah, you’ve said some weird things, Coop.”

“I’ve lived some weird things, Albert.”

Nervous laughter is offered up in reply. Then: “How do you feel, Coop?”

Cooper has no clue how to answer the question.

***  
Cooper can look out the window now that the back of the bed has been lifted up and he can sit. Instead he’s looking at one Harry S. Truman from Twin Peaks’ sheriff department. Friend. Harry’s hat occupies one of the remaining two seats. The other is occupied by Margaret. The sunlight shines on Harry’s face, lighting up one side of it and pitching the other in shadow. He’s younger this time, rather than older. Then again, Dale looks younger himself but he’s too wise to be fooled by that. He’s lived longer than anyone else he knows, even if his face sometimes looks fresh. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say he’s lived many more times than anyone he knows.

"I must have saved Her a thousand times," Cooper says earnestly. "Then I went back and stopped myself, Harry. Don't you see? I didn’t just get off the ride, I stopped myself from ever getting on it. Reality doesn't warp around me anymore, it only warps inside my head."

Why can’t Harry realize there’s no longer anything to worry about?

"Coop," Harry says desperately, "they are talking about committing you."

"That's no good, Harry. I've been far too committed in the past."

Harry looks nearly ready to cry, so Cooper asks if that’s cherry pie he smells in the paper bag. Harry swoops in suddenly, engulfing Cooper in his arms and holding him tight against him.

“I shouldn’t have let you go alone.” Harry palms the back of Cooper’s head. “I should have gone with you.”

“Harry, you need to learn to let go,” Cooper says, as he holds tight. He’ll take whatever anchors he can get.

"You've been on the ride too many times," the Log Lady says from the back of the room as she spits out her gum and sticks it under her chair.

"I was very committed," Cooper agrees as Harry lets go.

The Log Lady turns to Harry: "I see nothing wrong with him."

***

Cooper is alone when Doc Hayward comes into the room to introduce Dr. Jacoby. The window was opened earlier by a nurse as the day was one of those warmer days of early spring and the sun was bright and the birds sang. The room had been empty since Diane’s late night night visit. Dale had been looking outside, all he could see was sky, and fingering the crisp sheets methodically for the joy of sensation.

Doc Hayward spoke some words of introduction and Jacoby entered. Dale’s eyes narrowed and his fingers stilled. He never did care for this man, no matter what name he donned. Both men watched Doc Hayward make his exit, then Dale watched Jacoby take the nearest seat.

“How are you feeling?” Dr. Jacoby asks.

“Well.”

“I heard you were very tired,” Dr. Jacoby says.

“I have slept,” Dale answers.

“Do you know who you are?”

“Special Agent Dale Cooper, FBI.” He knows how to put steel in his voice and he does so.

Jacoby asks a series of questions, Dale answers, rapid fire with certain accuracy. The longer he has to settle back into this life, the easier it is to inhabit it. The questions are mundane and obviously meant to determine if he understood where he was and who he was. The answers, Dale finds, come much easier now.

“Do you know what year it is?” Jacoby asks.

Dale doesn’t answer, can’t answer.

There was a year where there was a man at his door.

Jacoby repeats the question.

Dale fingers the sheets, remembering that he was once a child. He was a child, so many lifetimes ago.

“Agent Cooper?”

“There’s some fear in letting go,” Dale mutters, now clutching the sheet. Dale looks around himself. The world is vibrant and solid and here. Past dictates the future. What kind of future does he want to flow from this past?

Jacoby leans forward.

“No, not you,” Dale says: “Diane, Harry, Albert.”

Jacoby leaves to fetch them.

The clock ticks, the wind blows, the nurses bustle out in the corridor. There is movement all around his still form. Momentum, if only he’s willing. You can’t keep the past in your heart like a precious thing or it will destroy you like a cancer. And he knows now, there is some relief in letting go.

So when they arrive, he tells them. He tells them everything.


End file.
